After many years of working with churches in the Birmingham area, Terry now works with the church in Columbia, South Carolina. His articles are well-written and can be found in various religious publication.
Love covers a multitude of sins, but does love require you to let yourself get burned over and over? Love is good will, wanting good things for the other person, but love does not mean we have to be vulnerable to people who proved themselves to be untrustworthy. Do we trust all the people we are to love? I am to love a thief, but am I required to trust a thief? Love and trust have certain intersections where they meet and from where they move apart. We are to love our enemies, but we are not required to trust our enemies. Love requires us to believe in the potential of even our enemies, but love does not demand that we throw all wise caution to the wind and trust them at the highest level of trust. Love requires that we forgive those who ask our forgiveness, but does love and forgiveness demand that trust returns to it’s former position? I think of Jesus and the difference between loving people and trusting people. “But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. John 2:24-25 ESV. Did Jesus love these people? Yes! Did He love his enemy? Yes! But, did He TRUST them enough to commit himself to them? No! He “knew what was in them,” and what was in them was not good, and sometimes love has to withhold trust when good is not in the other person and you know it.
There are legitimate times when we don’t need to trust people who are not trustworthy. God rebuked Israel for trusting in Pharaoh, king of Egypt, when such would be hurtful to them in the long run (Isa.36:6). There are levels of trust that we choose to give to people, and no man ever deserves to have our absolute trust, only God deserves that. But, the way people behave gives us the clues as to what level of trust we should choose to give. The level of trust varies from person to person. Trust is ours to give in measures we feel is best for us and the other person. If a person does not seem to do well with our high level of trust, we get to choose what level of trust to extend them in the future, if any at all. A penitent person may get back a higher level of trust than an impenitent and unapologetic person. Nobody earns full trust except God, and that means we are in charge of the wisdom of the trust we choose to extend.
We do need to check our hearts as to why we choose our levels of trust in a person. Do we choose to hate a person and then unfairly attribute bad character to them, giving them no chance to be a friend, and receive any level of trust? Or, has it been the case that they abused our trust, and then acted unconcerned about how their behavior injured us? If we have confronted them with the matter and they refused to acknowledge how their behavior injured us, then we may choose not to put our trust in them at that same level again, as long as we hold ourselves to the high principle of love for their wellbeing. Lack of trust must not come from hate or bitterness. Our spirits must be held to the high principle of love, which is good will for all.
Love believes in their potential to change, and hopes for such change, but love does not throw away reasonable discernment about the implications of their behavior pattern. We hope good things for those we would no longer trust at the same level as before, because love demands such hope. Love covers a multitude of sins, but love is also realistically discerning and rightly cautious. Jesus did not cover the multitude of sins where there was no remorse or repentance, and Jesus’ love did not blind him to what was in those wanting to undermine and rid themselves of Him. He came to die for our sins, but He did not entrust himself to those who would kill Him before the time was right for Jesus to lay down His own life according to His terms and determination. Jesus’ love took into consideration “what was in man” (the sinful plans and attitudes) and His love did not fail even though he chose not to entrust Himself to them. Check yourself on the issues of love, and then try to be wise about your levels of trust that you choose to grant to various ones. That is what Jesus did! Trust is ours to extend where we believe it will do the most good, both for ourselves and the person who may have lost a level of trust we extended to them before. We do not sin by withholding full trust in everyone, nor do we necessarily sin by being careful about how much trust we extend to those who had no good in them when they hurt us. We must love all, and love tries to put the best possible interpretation on people’s actions, but sometimes, in spite of our love, they prove that they do not love us back, and that is what determines the level of trust we choose to extend. A thief does not love us if he would steal from us, no matter how much we love them. A gossiper and backbiter does not love us, and knowing what is in them gives us the right to measure out our level of trust with a higher degree of caution.